The Sun Down Motel

Viv sat up in her chair. For a second, the ghosts were forgotten. “You work nights? Do you like it?”

Alma shrugged. “I’m the only woman at the station, so they put me on nights and they won’t take me off,” she said matter-of-factly. “They probably want me to quit, but I haven’t yet. Turns out I sort of like the night shift. To tell the truth, I barely remember what daytime looks like, and I don’t miss it.”

“I’m barely even tired anymore,” Viv said.

Alma nodded. “They say it’s bad for you, but then again, everything’s bad for you. Soda, cigarettes, you name it. If you don’t have a body like Olivia Newton-John’s, then you’re doing something wrong. Personally, I don’t buy it. I think it’s instructive to be awake in the middle of the night every once in a while. To really see what you’re missing while you’re usually sleeping.”

“Not everything you see is good,” Viv said.

“No, definitely not.” Alma smiled. “You seem like a nice girl. The Sun Down is a little rough for you, isn’t it?”

“The people aren’t so bad.” The living ones, anyway. She chose her words carefully. She didn’t even know Officer Trent, but it felt good to talk to someone, even for a few minutes. “I left home. I just wanted to be alone for a while, I guess.”

“Fell is a good place for that.” Alma stood up.

She had walked most of the way to the office door when Viv said, “Who died in the pool?”

Alma stopped, turned. Her mouth was set in a line. “What?”

Viv took a breath, smelled smoke again. For God’s sake, call an ambulance! The voice had been right here in this room, not two feet away. Alma Trent had to know. “Someone died in the pool, right? A kid.”

“Where did you hear that?” Alma’s voice was sharp, cautious.

Viv made herself shrug. “A rumor.”

There was a long beat of silence as Alma looked at her. Then she said, “You shouldn’t believe every rumor you hear. But yes, a boy died in the pool two years ago. Hit his head on the side of the pool, he went unconscious, and he never woke up. But I don’t know how you could have heard that, since Janice never talks about it and Henry can’t have told you.”

“Henry?” Viv asked.

“The man who worked here at the time,” Alma said. “He was the one who called it in. He had a heart attack six months later.” She pointed to Viv. “He was sitting in that very chair.”

Viv was silent. She thought she might be sick.

“Someday you’re going to tell me how you knew that,” Officer Trent said. “Those aren’t the worst things that have happened here. But I think you guessed that, too.” She nodded. “Have a nice night, Vivian Delaney. Call me if you need me again.”

Fell, New York

November 2017

CARLY

They hired me. There probably weren’t very many other applicants; maybe there weren’t any at all. But I found myself at eleven o’clock at night four days later, sitting in the Sun Down’s office with a miserable man named Chris, learning the job of night clerk. Chris was about fifty, and he said he was the son of the motel’s original owners. He wore a blue plaid flannel shirt and high-waisted jeans, and he was as unhappy as any guy I’d ever met, even in high school. Misery came off him like a smell.

“Keys are in here,” he said, opening the desk drawer. “We never changed to an electronic card system, because that costs a lot of money. We have problems with electronics in this place, anyway. We tried a booking computer for a while, but it never worked, and eventually it just stopped turning on. So we still use the book.” He gestured to the big leather book on the desk where guests wrote their names.

“Okay,” I said. My job as a barista had been way higher tech than this. “Landline, too, huh?” I gestured at the old phone.

Chris glanced at it. “You can use your cell out here if you get reception. We don’t have Wi-Fi unless you steal one of the local signals when the weather is right. Again, the electronics problem, and Wi-Fi costs money. Nancy comes at noon every day to make up any rooms that have been used—you’ll never see her. Dirty laundry goes in the bin in the back. Laundry is picked up and dropped off every week, again during the day. You won’t see them, either.”

I was still stuck on the Internet thing. “There’s no Internet? None at all?”

That got me a look of disdain. “I guess that’s a problem for someone your age, right? I bet you’d like to get paid to stay up all night and Twitter.”

I gave him my best poker face. “Yes,” I said. “It’s a dream of mine to make minimum wage to sit in a motel office and Twitter. Like, totally. When I get extra ambitious, I Facebook.”

“This country is going to the shitter in a handbasket,” Chris said.

“It’s ‘hell in a handbasket,’ actually. The saying.”

“Whatever. Wear this.” He handed me a dark blue vest with the logo on the breast. “Honestly, I won’t know if you actually wear it, but you’re supposed to. We were going to update them, but—”

“That costs money,” I filled in for him.

I gave him a smile, but he just looked sad. “My parents paid a song for this place,” he said. “Dad bought the land off of some old farmer and had the motel built for cheap. The land was supposed to be the real investment, with the motel just a way to make money to pay the taxes. I guess they were going to sell when the value went up.” He sighed. “It never did, because they never built that damn amusement park. Now my parents are dead and the place is mine. I tried to sell it around 2000, but no takers. So here we are. The few thousand bucks a year it makes is cheaper than paying an agent to sell it.”

I took the polyester vest, feeling its thick plasticky texture between my fingers. “Then how do you make a living?” I asked.

“I sell car insurance. Always have. Stateline Auto in town. If you need insurance, call me.” He looked around, his eyes tired. “Frankly, I hate this place. I come out here as little as possible. Every memory I have of this place is bad.”

I wanted to ask what that meant, but the expression on his face had shut down. So I said, “If you want to save money, why have a night clerk at all?”

“We tried going without one in the nineties, and frankly the hookers took over. They stayed here all night, did damage I had to fix, and took off without paying. Profits actually went down, if you can believe it. Turns out having someone here makes people behave, at least a little.” He pointed to a pinboard on the wall next to the desk with a note on it. “Call the cops if you need to. Most people are just jerks who back down when you tell them to knock it off. We’ve never had anyone get violent with a night clerk.”